“Jesus—” he whispered. “Dad, don’t do this to me.”
“Man’s got a right to know what happened to his girl,” Neri said severely. “Best get it off your chest, son. Best do that now before it’s too late.”
SHE’S YOU, he says in a still, dead voice.
Who?
You.
Miranda takes his pained head, stares at him with two eyes from the present, kisses him, crying, shaking from the release.
He looks at the young Miranda Julius cowering in his imagination. Time has worked such changes on her face, removed so much. No lines. No cares. No jaded acceptance of an imperfect world.
You’re beautiful, he says.
A thin, unconvincing laugh now, local, in his own piece of staggering space. Hers.
Only on the outside, Nic. The outside tells you nothing. The outside lies. The only truth lies in your imagination. Forgo that and there’s nothing but the dark.
Shouts echo through the caverns. Ripples of fear and anxiety—real, not imagined—disturb the wakeful dream inside his head.
He tries to walk and stumbles. The chemical fire is raging unchecked through his head. She holds him. He trembles. He sweats.
There’s more, she says.
“I JUST SCREWED HER,” Mickey bleated. “That’s all. She begged for it. All the time. I got bored, if you want to know. I wanted to mess around with the others like we were supposed to. She wouldn’t let me. It was just ”Mickey, Mickey, Mickey.“ I said that wasn’t the point. She was supposed to mix it. She didn’t want to know. She—”
His nervous eyes flickered between the two men.
“She said you was just a bunch of dirty old bastards. She wasn’t putting it out for any of you. She just went on about love and stuff. Like the whole world was something special. Even her being knocked up was special, but I just wanted her down the clinic, get the thing out. Love? All I did was bang her.”
Wallis watched him, toying with the knife, saying nothing.
“See,” Neri suggested. “Like I said. The girl just didn’t want to play the game. Her choice, I guess. But why come along in the first place?”
Mickey nodded at Wallis. “ ”Cos he made her. It wasn’t some birthday present. He thought it’d be good for business. That’s what she said.“
Neri cocked his head to one side, thinking about this. “I find that hard to believe, Mickey. Vergil here is an educated man. He came up with the idea for that party after all. He fixed all that stuff with the robes and the flowers. I just brung the dope and some guys who might be grateful for a chance at some young ass. The girl must have guessed what was coming.”
“None of them guessed,” Mickey yelled. “You were so far out of it you didn’t even get that, did you? Him and that professor guy of his just filled them up with so much stuff then put them in a room full of old guys with hard-ons and bolted the doors. They didn’t get any choices. They did what you wanted. Then when it turned bad you thought you could shut them all up with a few promises and that was it.”
Neri stared at Wallis. “Is that right, Vergil? My memory’s not so great after all these years.”
The American shot Mickey a hateful glance. “That fool was shot full of so much dope—”
Neri nodded. “I agree there, Mickey. You’re just trying to avoid the truth. You knocked up this poor girl when you first met her in Sicily. You fucked her rigid that night we came here. Then what? She told you she was coming to me and Vergil to announce a little shotgun wedding? Or did the dope and the festivities just go a little too far and you woke up one moment with a knife in your hand, and her stone dead?”
“No!”
Neri grimaced. “This is going nowhere. We don’t have time to piss around forever. Maybe I should just let Vergil do his thing now.”
Mickey Neri turned on his father, pleading. “Will you listen, for chrissake? I went outside for a smoke. It was driving me crazy in here. All these old guys screwing everywhere, taking junk like they were twenty years younger. And this place. It’s like being dead. In the grave. I was out there maybe an hour. I thought I’d go home but I knew you’d be mad with me. Then I came back, into that room you gave us, and she was there. Like you saw. It wasn’t me.”
Neri’s mouth hardened into a tight bloodless line. He looked at his watch and said nothing.
“But it’s always the same,” Mickey snapped. “There’s shit around and who do you turn to? Me. You never once asked what happened. You just looked at her, looked at me, then shook your head like you always do. You know how many times I’ve seen that over the years?”
“The girl was dead, Mickey,” Neri said quietly. “You were the only one who was with her. I was supposed to be doing business with her stepfather who was just a couple of rooms away, out of his head, playing god or something, fucking everything that moved. If I’d hesitated then, if I’d let him know what had really been going on—you screwing the girl, getting her in the family way like that—you’d have been dead anyway. Did you ever stop to think of that?”
Mickey was quiet for a moment, a tiny light of clarity sparking in his head.
“No,” he mumbled.
A PART OF HIM is almost asleep, hiding behind closed eyes, listening to what she says. Another sees. The god is angry. The girl screams. Fists fly, nails tear. Through the dream he feels the pressure of their shrieking rebound off the damp and rocky veins that enclose them. A strong black arm pumps back and forth. She falls, blood pumping from her perfect lips.
He tears off the mask. A black face, rent by fury, demands obeisance, receives only scorn.
I’ll tell I’ll tell I’ll tell, the girl screeches, furious.
The man moves behind her, raises his arm. Silver flashes in the yellow light. Two eyes glitter, terrified, hidden in the shadows, watching, witnessing.
Then the reverie ends. He opens his eyes and walks towards the voices and the light.
NERI GLANCED towards the shadows, wondering if it was Adele skulking round there now, then nodded towards Mickey.
“So, Vergil. What are you waiting for? Are you going to do him?”
Mickey’s head fell down on his chest. He began to sob.
“And then what?” the American demanded. “You shoot me.”
“Nah. What for? You lost a daughter? I lose a son. You probably find this hard to believe but I never killed someone without a reason. Even those cops outside my house had it coming to them. You? Well, you got me in all manner of trouble with them, but you did me a favour too. You reminded me I was ready for retirement. A man should know when to walk off this stage. You did, didn’t you?”
Wallis made a lazy wave with the knife point and said nothing.
“Besides,” Neri continued, “if I just walk away from this mess and leave you sitting in the middle of it, you’re going to have so much explaining to do. Reading about all that from somewhere nice and warm and safe could be real amusing. I might just die laughing.”
“You might,” Wallis said, and allowed himself a smile.
“An eye for an eye then,” Neri said, returning the gesture. “Just as it should be. We agreed? All this nonsense ends here?”
“Yeah,” Wallis said. “It ends here.”
Neri looked at him approvingly. “That’s good. You don’t mind if I ask one more thing though? Just a tiny detail that bothers me.”